Shanghai Disney: Visitors unable to leave without negative Covid test as park shuts - "People have been told they will not be allowed out of the theme park until they can show a negative test... those awaiting their freedom at Shanghai Disney can console themselves with one positive: rides are continuing to operate for those trapped inside The Happiest Place on Earth... anyone who has visited the park since Thursday must provide three negative test results over three consecutive days... It's not the first time the park has unexpectedly shut. Last November, 30,000 people were trapped inside after authorities ordered everyone to be tested as part of contact tracing... The Chinese government's insistence on the increasingly unpopular policy comes as the economy continues to take a hit as a result, with GDP falling by 2.6% in the three months to the end of June from the previous quarter."
China Covid: Panic and fear drove iPhone factory breakout - "China's leader Xi Jinping insists there will be no swerving from zero-Covid - but the ongoing chaos which his government's policy is delivering is there for all to see at the Foxconn plant in the city of Zhengzhou. What drove the mass breakout at the world's largest assembly line for Apple computers was fear, panic and ignorance... her immediate bosses at Foxconn were saying that there were no Covid infections in the factory while the company was telling the media that there were no "symptomatic" infections. And yet there were plenty of known examples of staff who had tested positive... This young factory worker heard that the army was going to come in and take control so as to enforce a type of giant "living with Covid" experiment which involved allowing everyone in that part of Zhengzhou city to get sick. According to these rumours, the plan was to see how many of them would die. Then, if the carnage wasn't too bad, this would provide a guide as to whether the rest of China could open up or not. Sentiments were spreading on their chat groups like: "Foxconn is going to take my life." She clearly wasn't the only one hearing this and workers started busting out. On Saturday night footage went round of a yellow barrier fence being pushed down to allow some to escape... In scenes reminiscent of the great depression a century ago, workers have been piling onto the backs of trucks, sometimes lighting small fires to keep warm... A key problem has been widespread ignorance about the nature of the illness. In much of China, people are as terrified of catching the virus as if it were cancer. The Chinese government has done little to alter these misunderstandings and, in fact, has often made them worse. The narrative from those in charge here has been that elsewhere, Covid has been cutting a swathe through the population, but Chinese people should consider themselves lucky because they have the Communist Party to protect them with the zero-Covid approach... for the vast majority of infected people who have been vaccinated - catching the virus means a few days sick at home and nothing more. This last point is something that many in China are completely unaware of... The government's system of controlling Covid is not capable of operating without causing significant disruption, not only to people's lives, but potentially to key sectors of economy. For China's leader Xi Jinping, this may not be as important as maintaining political control. But there are only two paths ahead - alter the zero-Covid approach or see more Foxconn-style upheaval in the future."
China's capital city Beijing battles Covid with more apartment lockdowns - "More and more apartment compounds in Beijing on Friday forbade residents from leaving for at least a few days. That’s on top of a growing number of bans on business activity, which have forced gyms to close and restaurants to halt in-store dining."
She was expelled for 'smuggling' pancakes onto campus in China under Covid-19 lockdown, but an online backlash forced school to reverse their decision - "An online backlash has forced a school in northwestern China to reverse a decision it took to expel a student for selling homemade pancakes "smuggled" onto a campus which was under Covid-19 lockdown. The teenage student — who is in her last year at The Third High School of Huining County, in Gansu province — was handed the punishment after she took clandestine delivery of deep-fried pancakes from her family over a school wall... Several hundred senior students, including the unnamed girl, have been in lockdown at the school since late September... within hours the school reversed their decision and asked the student to resume her classes the next day, a move taken after the county government intervened amid widespread public ridicule and criticism of the initial decision... "Where does the school cafeteria get their supply from? Isn't it bought from shops outside the campus? Can this cause the spread of Covid-19 then?""
China authorities apologise after boy dies in Covid-19 lockdown - "Chinese local authorities apologised on Thursday after a three-year-old boy died of carbon monoxide poisoning when medical care was delayed because of a Covid-19 lockdown, in a rare admission of responsibility... The boy’s father, surnamed Tuo, wrote on social media on Wednesday that he had been denied permission to leave his housing compound by workers stationed at a checkpoint, and that an ambulance did not arrive in time. Over an hour later, he managed to break out of the compound and flag down a taxi to a hospital, shortly after which his son was pronounced dead, he said. On Thursday, district health authorities published a detailed account of the incident on social media and expressed their “sincere condolences” to the boy’s relatives... The Lanzhou authorities admitted it took over 90 minutes to dispatch an ambulance after the boy’s father rang an emergency hotline multiple times, and they confirmed lengthy interactions with staff took place at the compound gate... The authorities said Mr Tuo had eventually flagged down a taxi with help from a policeman at another checkpoint. However, Mr Tuo said he had been forced to break through a checkpoint barrier and that it was a passer-by who helped him flag the ride. He also claimed he was asked to present a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result by community staff, despite the entire housing compound having been under lockdown and not tested for the previous 10 days... The tragedy triggered a storm of online criticism of China’s zero-Covid-19 policy, with one related hashtag censored on Weibo after gaining hundreds of millions of views. “Three years of the Covid-19 pandemic have been his entire life”... The incident is the latest in a series of health emergencies that have provoked outrage after they were exacerbated by zero-Covid-19 policies. Late last month, censors scrubbed posts saying a 14-year-old girl had died in the central city of Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied prompt medical care. In January, a pregnant woman in the city of Xi’an miscarried after being refused hospital entry for not having a PCR test result"
Clearly this is on local authorities instead of Xi's evil
Self-isolated: China's lonely zero-COVID battle in spotlight as Xi seeks third term - Nikkei Asia - "The residents had been tested by local authorities for 15 consecutive days, and none of them ever tested positive for COVID-19. Still, the cash-strapped city, which had logged only one death from the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, had pledged to ensure "zero positive cases" by Sept. 19 to "celebrate the successful opening of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China with concrete actions."... The "concrete actions" pledged by Guiyang turned out to be extreme: once any individual was identified as having been in contact with a positive COVID-19 case, everyone in the area had to be sent to quarantine centers, which in some cases could be roughly 300 kilometers away. Meanwhile, the incentive to bus quarantinees out of the city was clear -- it got them out of the city and off the municipal government's official tab. In one of the buses, anxious residents kept asking the driver why they had to be quarantined and where they were going. The driver, who was wrapped tightly in protective gear from head to toe, remained silent. Two and a half hours later, the bus crashed, killing 27 and injuring 20 others. Such arbitrary and desperate measures are an all too common feature of China's increasingly draconian efforts to contain COVID-19... The zero-COVID strategy is the closest thing Xi has to a legacy as he tries to equate his thin slate of accomplishments over the past decade to those of former leaders Mao and Deng Xiaoping, considered the towering giants of the party, and enter history with the gravitas necessary to justify his continued rule... The lower mortality rate of the new variants has left many asking whether China's evermore extreme control measures are worth the cost. "China found a good balance between economic growth and epidemic control two years ago, but now it is not following science, which is very absurd," said Jin Dongyan, a virus expert at the University of Hong Kong. "If the zero-COVID policy persists, that's actually a step backwards."... Having politicized his anti-epidemic policy as a demonstration of the superiority of the Chinese system over the U.S., it will be another challenge for him to explain a shift of his zero-COVID policy, which would be tantamount to admitting an error. Questions about why the government did not use the past two years to prepare better for an inevitable reopening will also undoubtedly surface. In the Nikkei COVID-19 Recovery Index, designed by Nikkei Asia to rank 121 countries according to their COVID-19 strategies -- measured by case numbers, vaccination rates, mobility and functioning economic life -- China's ranking has fallen precipitously throughout 2022. From No. 1 in the index in July 2021, when many other countries were struggling to contain the damage brought by the delta variant, China fell to below 90th in spring this year, during the two months Shanghai was locked down... after an earthquake struck the western city of Chengdu, which was under partial lockdown, panicked residents attempted to evacuate their apartment complex in an effort to find refuge but were stopped by a barred iron gate. "Did the building fall down? Has it fallen? I ask you, did it fall down?" A guard on the other side of the gate yelled through a loudspeaker, preventing the crowd from leaving the complex. As the party congress approaches, China's COVID-19 prevention method is becoming more arbitrary: live fish and crabs were tested for the coronavirus in Xiamen; millions were ordered to queue up for COVID-19 testing in Chongqing when wildfires were striking the city; authorities in Yongji, Shanxi province, locked down the city despite there being zero positive cases, and a county in Henan province initiated a 50,000 yuan ($7,050) reward for reporting one positive case. "The pandemic campaign has, to some extent, been turned into a loyalty campaign," said Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation. "That means officials in the regions have gone out of their way to implement the COVID policy just to curry favor with Xi Jinping." With the appearance of the highly transmissible omicron variant at the beginning of the year, China has been regularly testing its 1.4 billion people, who now need to present a negative result from no more than 48 hours earlier -- 24 in some cases -- to enter most places. "It's pointless to do mass testing when there is no outbreak," said Jin from the University of Hong Kong. "It's like asking women who have no likelihood of being pregnant to take a pregnancy test every day."... In the past three years, China's propaganda machine has been exploiting the country's "great achievements" in containing the coronavirus, gloating over chaos and mass death in the West, while exaggerating the side effects of Pfizer's vaccines, which have proved to be more effective than those developed in China. Public debate of the fatality of COVID-19 in China is not allowed, either. Anyone arguing that new mutations of the virus are less lethal is regarded as disloyal. A report by Huatai Securities arguing that the omicron variant is no more dangerous than the flu was soon blocked online in China, as was a report by the Beijing-based Anbound Research Center calling for the country to adjust its zero-COVID policy. Anbound's social media accounts were also suspended for two months... If the World Health Organization announces the pandemic is over next year, Deng added, China will be in an even more awkward position. Ahead of a potential reopening, the most important thing for China to do now is to "stop demonizing the coronavirus," Jin from the University of Hong Kong said, adding that fooling the public through instilling panic will cause more mental harm than the virus itself... Chinese authorities are now urging the elderly to get vaccinated, using characteristically authoritarian methods. In Shanghai, local authorities in June set vaccination targets for each front-line doctor, promising fines for those that fail to meet their targets... "One reason the authorities didn't forcibly vaccinate the elderly like the mass testing is ... people with preexisting conditions may die [after vaccination], even if it's not connected to the vaccinations, and their family members will link the death to the vaccination, which may lead to social unrest if the death toll reaches a certain level"... "China's refusal to import mRNA vaccines is due to vaccine nationalism"... In China, infectious diseases like COVID-19 can only be treated at designated hospitals... "If the country still refuses to open up, we will all be screwed up. All the top real estate developers in our city are on the brink of bankruptcy, we expect things to turn a little bit better after opening up," a government official from one of the richest cities of the eastern Jiangsu province told Nikkei. Most dire is the situation for local governments, which must fund the huge testing and tracing bureaucracy to sustain the state's zero-COVID policy... Nomura estimates that testing 70% of the population every two days would amount to 8.4% of China's fiscal expenditure... Even if zero COVID-19 leads to mass business closures and high unemployment, the chances of social unrest are low, Deng said, but if the impact keeps expanding, to local governments, for example, localities might be forced to cut spending on health care, and the threat to social stability would grow."
Economic impact of the most drastic lockdown during COVID‐19 pandemic—The experience of Hubei, China - "This paper uses a panel data approach to assess the evolution of economic consequences of the drastic lockdown policy in the epicenter of COVID-19—the Hubei Province of China during worldwide curbs on economic activity. We find that the drastic 76-day COVID-19 lockdown policy brought huge negative impacts on Hubei's economy. In 2020:q1, the lockdown quarter, the treatment effect on GDP was about 37% of the counterfactual. However, the drastic lockdown also brought the spread of COVID-19 under control in little more than two months. After the government lifted the lockdown in early April, the economy quickly recovered with the exception of passenger transportation sector which rebounded not as quickly as the rest of the general economy."
We know that lockdowns don't work. And we also know that they have huge costs
Zero-Covid: How Xi's flagship policy is spoiling his party - "The idea was to have China in stable and tip-top shape when thousands of delegates gather in Beijing to usher in a historic third term in power for Xi Jinping. However, the coronavirus is not playing nicely. In recent weeks, tens of millions of people have again been confined to their homes in lockdowns across 60 towns and cities and this is bringing political pressure on the man who has become the most powerful Chinese figure since the first Communist-era leader Mao Zedong. The government's ongoing "Dynamic zero-Covid" strategy is inextricably linked to Mr Xi. Its success is his success. Its failure? Well, it would be a brave person who tried to pin it on him... official youth unemployment stands at 18.7%. Earlier this year it was nudging 20%... While it has been prepared to enforce strict compliance in all other areas of Covid policy, it has not pushed vaccination with anywhere near the same enthusiasm. There is no compulsion to be vaccinated. There's barely a public awareness campaign. And it has stubbornly limited vaccination to locally developed vaccines only when research shows they are not as efficient as those produced internationally. It really does look like national pride trumping science... rail services out of Xinjiang were suspended and many parts of the western region including its capital Urumqi were under lockdown as officials admitted they had failed to stop the virus spreading. China's stricter lockdowns have seen widespread reports of people unable to source food and medicine - but zero-Covid is affecting people's daily lives in myriad other ways too. Three years into the crisis, this is exhausting the population. On the outskirts of Beijing, workers on modest incomes live in an area called Yanjiao because the rent is cheaper. It is on the other side of a river, just inside neighbouring Hebei province... The delays have made the commuters of Yanjiao seem unreliable in the eyes of employers. "Many people who live in this area got fired by their companies," said one woman in the queue for the bus. "And, if they find new work, they might get treated unfairly again."... If you are visiting somewhere and a few coronavirus cases emerge, the city can be locked down. But even if it isn't, your own city can suddenly decide not to accept you back if you've been somewhere with infections. You're stranded, sometimes for an extended period, and you have to pay for your accommodation and other needs... For decades, China's economic transformation has been powered by exports, but zero-Covid means some overseas buyers are sourcing their products elsewhere because of fears of disruption to China's supply chains... The bosses had started to explain their recent challenges when a man walks in and starts secretly filming us on his phone. He then goes and speaks to the owners - the interview is off. "I'm really sorry. We just can't do it," says one of the company owners. While people here are legally entitled to be interviewed, who would defy the Communist Party in this way? Before the pandemic, China's growth was around 6%. Its most recent GDP figure was 0.4%. The local government knows that zero-Covid is tanking the economy and doesn't want anyone speaking about it. In a small shop selling items for bedding, a woman tells us their sales are down by half. Then another woman suddenly appears in the shop, posing as a customer. "Hey what are you talking about?" she asks in an effort to appear genuinely curious. After we leave, she returns and questions the shop owners. One of the architects of the policy which has stopped the coronavirus from ripping through China is Professor Liang Wannian, head of the government's Covid expert panel. When we speak to him, he acknowledges that China's home-grown vaccines are not as effective at stopping infection as had been hoped, but says they do prevent severe illness and death. When does he thinks zero-Covid might come to an end? "It's hard to say"... Some Chinese doctors have even been telling their patients that they should not get the shots. As a result many analysts don't believe that official statistics accurately reflect the true level of vaccination."
Daikin to wean itself off Chinese-made air conditioner parts - Nikkei Asia - "Japan's Daikin Industries plans to establish a supply chain to make air conditioners without having to rely on Chinese-made parts by March 2024, as the manufacturing sector grows increasingly wary of China's strict zero-COVID policy. Daikin, one of the world's top air conditioner makers, will make its own core components, including parts that help conserve energy, and also encourage its suppliers to manufacture their products outside of China... Japanese companies have begun to make this move. A total of 12,706 companies were operating in China as of June, down 940 from the previous survey conducted in 2020 and the lowest in the past 10 years, according to research firm Teikoku Databank."
Melissa Chen on Twitter - "Taylor Lorenz has stated her views very clearly: she's totally for China's brutal Zero Covid policy, regardless of the human and economic costs. She's also very much a TikTok evangelizer. Interesting how she doesn't hold a single opinion that's remotely critical of the CCP."
Taylor Lorenz defends China's 'zero COVID' lockdowns - "“A coronavirus outbreak on the verge of being China’s biggest of the pandemic has exposed a critical flaw in Beijing’s ‘zero COVID’ strategy: a vast population without natural immunity,” the Washington Post’s caption read. Lorenz, who has criticized the US government’s lifting of virus mitigation measures and is often seen in public wearing a mask due to having a medical condition that puts her at risk, criticized her own newspaper. “Choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people (as the US is doing) isn’t a ‘critical flaw,'” Lorenz tweeted. “There is no lasting ‘natural immunity’ to COVID,” Lorenz added. “You can get covid over and over and over again bc there are so many endlessly evolving strains and antibodies wane.”... This isn’t the first time that Lorenz has publicly criticized a Washington Post colleague over a disagreement on COVID. Last month, Lorenz took aim at Helaine Olen, a columnist and contributor to the newspaper’s opinion page, who opined on a Page Six story detailing how infamous germaphobe Howard Stern left his “bunker” to dine with friends for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. “At some point we’re going to need to begin a conversation about the people still too afraid to leave their homes because of Covid,” Olen tweeted. “I personally know of two such cases. This is not a healthy way to live.” Lorenz responded: “What an absurd, insensitive thing to post. Thousands are dying per week, millions are disabled & we have zero effective drugs that prevent infection.” “Immunocompromised [people] don’t deserve condescending comments [about] being ‘too afraid’ of a virus that can kill or severely disable us.”"
More lockdowns! More covid apartheid! More inflation!
Chinese government removes rare protest banners in Beijing - Nikkei Asia - "Beijing authorities removed rare banners of political protest from an overpass in the Chinese capital, according to images circulated widely on social media on Thursday, just days before the start of a twice-in-a-decade Communist Party congress. The banners bore several slogans, including a call for President Xi Jinping's ouster and an end to strict COVID-19 policies"
China restricts the word 'Beijing' on social media after rare protest against Xi Jinping - "bridge guards have apparently been set up in the Beijing area, preventing similar protest from occurring... outside of China, it seems that many dissidents and protestors have taken up the words of the bridge protest, such as university students. Even in China itself, there are signs that dissatisfaction with the government is rising, with an in-depth report by the Wall Street Journal noting that many posts about Communist Party leaders in China have almost all comments hidden, and many official posts preemptively preventing comments. China is holding the 20th Communist Party Congress, where President and Party Secretary General Xi Jinping is to be coronated party leader for an unprecedented third term. This comes amidst growing frustration over Covid-19 prevention measures, such as harsh lockdowns with little warning, and other associated challenges presented to the economy. The congress is likely the reason why authorities have responded to news of the protest with harsher than usual measures. Some Chinese claimed their Weibo accounts have been permanently banned after sharing images of the bridge protest -- a temporary ban lasting weeks or months would have been more common."
China is paying the price for Xi Jinping's autocratic hubris - "It takes a lot to get the Chinese people on to the streets to protest against the Communist Party and its leadership. The massacre at Tiananmen Square may have been more than 30 years ago, but its impact has lived on in the national psyche, despite state efforts to pretend it never happened. But the government in Beijing has over-reached itself by continuing with its deranged policy of shutting down entire cities whenever there is an outbreak of Covid. At the weekend, demonstrations that began in Urumqi in the far northwest spread to the major cities of the east as people fed up with being locked away made their anger apparent. In Shanghai, crowds calling for Xi Jinping’s removal clashed with riot police, and students have protested in Beijing and Nanjing. The outbreak in Urumqi came after 10 people died in a fire because strict controls to suppress the virus meant they could not escape. A few weeks ago, 27 people died in a bus crash while being transported to an isolation camp. Residents of locked-down cities report being incarcerated without food. Even the most autocratic state will find it hard to hold the line if they are killing and starving people in the name of public health... Unlike the Tiananmen students seeking post-Cold War political liberalisation, the impact of the Covid lockdowns is causing hardship and privation to millions. Desperate people are less likely to be intimidated if they feel they have little to lose. President Xi has boxed himself in by choosing to pitch the state against a respiratory disease and by measuring success as something he cannot possibly achieve – its total eradication. He has given the Chinese people no indication of when it might end, nor does he have a coherent vaccination policy."
If they have to shoot 2 million people to save China from 1,000 Covid deaths, so be it
Apple turned off a private communication tool in China just before major protests broke out - "Earlier this month, Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China. The file-sharing tool for iOS was used by protesters to communicate freely without the risk of censorship, because the tool uses direct connections between devices, creating a local network that cannot be monitored by government internet regulators. Initially, people could choose to receive AirDrops from everyone nearby. However, a recent iOS update has made that impossible. The update made a change to AirDrop’s usage that only applies in mainland China, while the rest of the world can still use it to communicate as before... According to Bloomberg, Apple will roll out the “Everyone for 10 minutes” feature globally next year. But it is not clear why the feature was first suddenly rolled out in China, especially during a time of such upheaval and the biggest protests China has seen in over 30 years. Apple has helped Beijing to suppress public dissent multiple times, mostly by complying with its requests to remove apps used by protestors for information and communication. Apple also helps the Chinese Communist Party prevent users from remaining private by banning VPNs in the region."
How Xi’s zero-Covid rules squandered the life chances for a generation of Chinese youth - "A decade ago Xi promised the country’s youth a “Chinese dream” to help match American aspirations. But a number of indicators suggest life for many young people is moving in the opposite direction. A record number of graduates are entering a jobs market with near record youth unemployment. Housing affordability in the biggest cities has become stretched to eye wateringly expensive levels. And the young are shunning marriage, perhaps a symptom of the financial insecurity and the male-female imbalance caused by the one child policy. Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, says: “Beyond unemployment, there’s a lot more uncertainty about the future than previous generations of young people felt. It’s not just zero Covid: even before the pandemic, the economy wasn’t as dynamic as before. “The confidence that you’d be able to earn far more in five years than now has gone. China’s leadership has rolled out campaigns against major sectors of the economy, like the tech giants, which undermines feelings of job security.” The Ministry of Education expects a record 11.6m students to graduate from universities and colleges in 2023, 800,000 more than the previous year. But they are entering a labour market beset by soaring unemployment. Youth unemployment - for those aged between 16 and 24 - has jumped from below 10pc three years ago to an all-time high of 20pc this summer as the Chinese economy is hamstrung by zero Covid restrictions. It has since edged down to a still historically high 18pc... Fathom Consulting estimates that the house price to income ratio measuring affordability was even worse than in the US and UK, with Shanghai and Beijing the most expensive. Last year it found that it could take a young couple on starting salaries 30 to 40 years to buy a house without family support. “The pace of building new housing hasn't kept up with the demand for housing and therefore the prices have shot up,” says Wrigley. “Young 20-somethings, when they choose to buy their first house, they have to opt for somewhere that's an hour and a half or two hours commute in the outskirts of Shanghai just to get somewhere affordable.”"
China Covid protests: Security tightened in China after widespread Covid protests - "“I’m not foreign forces, I’m a Chinese citizen” - this sentence has appeared on some pictures circulating online, said to be taken from university campuses and graffiti in various cities. The Chinese government often alleges that "foreign forces" are behind expressions of dissent. It has blamed “collusion with foreign forces” for protests in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and other regions in the past... "Is there foreign force? Maybe. But do you think foreign forces can organize activities across the country at such a large scale overnight, and give people money for holding white papers? I would say you underestimated our surveillance network," a Weibo post liked 28,000 times reads. "Foreign forces won't be able to enter the country because their health code would be red," another post liked more than 4,000 times said."
China censors maskless crowd footage in World Cup broadcasts - "games broadcast on the state-owned channel, China Central Television (CCTV), were being edited to avoid live shots of cheering crowds and instead show closeups of the players and coaches."
China eases virus controls amid effort to head off protests - "Following weekend demonstrations at which some crowds made the politically explosive demand that leader Xi Jinping resign, the streets of major cities have been quiet in the face of a crackdown that has been largely out of sight... Notes on social media complained people were being stopped at random for police to check smartphones, possibly looking for prohibited apps such as Twitter, in what they said was a violation of China’s Constitution. “I am especially afraid of becoming the ‘Xinjiang model’ and being searched on the excuse of walking around,” said a posting signed Qi Xiaojin on the popular Sina Weibo platform, referring to the northwestern region where Uyghur and other Muslim minorities are under intense surveillance. Protesters have publicized protests on Twitter and other foreign social media that the Communist Party tries to block access to, while videos and photos are deleted from services within China. But police appeared to be trying to keep their crackdown out of sight, possibly to avoid encouraging others by drawing attention to the scale of the protests."
Facebook uncovers Chinese network behind fake expert - "The accounts had promoted the claims of a fake Swiss biologist called "Wilson Edwards", who alleged the US was meddling in efforts to find the origins of Covid-19. Edwards' comments had been widely carried by Chinese state media outlets. However, the Swiss embassy said that it was unlikely this person existed. Meta said in its report the social media campaign was "largely unsuccessful," and targeted English-speaking audiences in the United States and Britain and Chinese-speaking audiences in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tibet. Earlier in July, an account posing as a Swiss biologist called Wilson Edwards had made statements on Facebook and Twitter that the United States was applying pressure on the World Health Organization scientists who were studying the origins of Covid-19 in an attempt to blame the virus on China. State media outlets, including CGTN, Shanghai Daily and Global Times, had cited the so-called biologist based on his Facebook profile. However, the Swiss embassy said in August that the person likely did not exist, as the Facebook account was opened only two weeks prior to its first post and only had three friends. It added "there was no registry of a Swiss citizen with the name "Wilson Edwards" and no academic articles under the name", and urged Chinese media outlets to take down any mention of him. Meta Platforms said in a November report that its investigation into the matter found "links to individuals in mainland China, including employees of Sichuan Silence Information Technology Co Ltd... and individuals associated with Chinese state infrastructure companies based around the world." Sichuan Silence Information's website describes the company as a network and information security company that provides technical support to China's Ministry of Public Security and CNCERT, the key team that coordinates China's cybersecurity emergency response... The persona's original post was initially shared and liked by fake Facebook accounts, and later forwarded by authentic users, most of which belonged to employees of Chinese state infrastructure companies in over 20 countries, Meta said. It added that the operation used Virtual Personal Network (VPN) infrastructure to conceal its origin, and to give Edwards a more rounded personality. It also said that his profile photo also appeared to have been generated using machine-learning capabilities."
